Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight

by Jay Barbree

  * * *

  No one needed to tell Neil Armstrong his rocket was alive. Flame and thunder rolled over the pad and he and Dave felt its explosive fury. Four hundred and thirty thousand pounds of thrust from its first stage was straining against its huge hold-down bolts as its two engines built to full power. Three seconds later, Neil heard rifle shots crack through the thunder and he knew the hold-down bolts had been sheared. Immediately he felt movement.

  They were on their way. The only surprise? Neil couldn’t believe how smooth their liftoff was and he heard CapCom Jim Lovell tell him, “Good liftoff, 8.”

  “Roger,” Neil responded.

  They were on the flight director’s audio loop and Neil immediately felt the Titan roll. He and Dave were now headed into orbit on their side and he told Houston Mission Control, “Roll program is in and pitch program is in at 30 seconds.”

  Neil feels the rocket beneath him come to life. (NASA)

  “Roger, pitch program,” Lovell answered, adding, “Mark. Fifty seconds. You are looking good, 8.”

  “Roger,” said Neil as they continued gaining speed, and he stared straight up through his cat-eye window at the bluest of Florida skies. Already they were pulling a G load and he was being pushed deeper and deeper into his seat as he watched feathery white clouds scatter as if they were being chased away by the thundering Titan II pushing him and Dave upward and upward. All at once he knew they were punching through Max-Q, a sudden intrusion of the atmosphere’s strongest pressures into their smooth flight, which reminded him of when he was 12 or 13 riding his old bicycle without fenders down that rutted road, bouncing along to his job at the local airport.

  Gemini 8 heads into space. (NASA)

  His rocket was now shaking and twisting his limbs as did that old bicycle, and he managed a quick laugh remembering how his dog Skip would run along barking at everything and getting just enough in his way to make him jerk the handlebars even more.

  He loved that dog. He loved him as long as he stayed out of the briars and he didn’t have to dig through the thorns that would rip into his arms and hands to untangle Skip’s paws and legs.

  That was pure pleasure then and this is pure pleasure now being shaken by the Titan II. It was fighting its way through squeezing forces and Neil listened to the engine roar and high-pitched howls of air ripping past vanish with the supersonic speeds as the sky turned from rich blue to black. Neil was suddenly aware this was where he had been in his X-15 in April 1962.

  He had topped nearly forty miles that day and he recognized the place and—“Gemini 8, this is Houston.” Jim Lovell interrupted Neil’s thoughts. “You are Go from the ground for staging.”

  “Roger,” Neil acknowledged.

  The two astronauts were ready. Suddenly a sheet of fire washed over their spacecraft with a heavy jolt. For just an instant it could have been bad news, but both pilots recognized their second stage had ignited. They knew the second stage fired while still attached to the first, and the sudden blow of 100,000 pounds of flaming thrust was what ripped the two stages apart.

  It was not at all pleasant and they caught their collective breaths and waited for full pitch over, waited for Gemini 8’s nose to come down, and suddenly Neil could only see black sky.

  “I understand you have guidance?”

  “Rog, we have guidance,” Neil told Mission Control. “Zero pitch and one degree yaw right coming in.”

  “Roger, your guidance looks good on the ground.”

  “Pitch … yaw about a quarter of a degree,” Neil told Lovell.

  “Roger, your plots are looking very nominal here on the ground, 8.”

  “The second stage was real good, Mission Control.”

  “Gemini 8,” Jim Lovell told them, “you are Go from the ground.”

  Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott were now relaxed and enjoying their ride. They were ahead of the curve on all their flight duties and their spacecraft nose had pitched over giving them an unbelievable view of the horizon, and they drank it all in as they looked down on the world from their seats with the gods, the sky before them the blackest of black with a thin band of blue and whites along the horizon.

  They watched as the waters of the Atlantic covered by layers of clouds slid beneath them and they heard Jim Lovell tell them, “8, you have reached 80 percent of the velocity desired. You are now 85 nautical miles high and looking good.”

  Neil and Dave looked at one another with broad smiles and nods and began their procedures for second-stage cutoff and separation followed by the first firing of Gemini 8’s own rocket thrusters. Neil would fire the thrusters. Dave would feed him the numbers. They needed a little more push from the spacecraft itself to reach the orbit they needed to chase down and dock with the Agena target.

  * * *

  The Armstrong household, as did millions viewing the flight of Gemini 8 on television, heard NASA commentator Paul Haney report:

  We have second-stage cutoff, approximately 5 minutes, 40 seconds (into the flight). Five minutes 50 seconds, in about 10 seconds the crew should initiate their thrusters. Flight dynamics confirms again he is go and Lovell is passing this up to the crew. Six minutes, 5 seconds into the flight, and Armstrong advises they have completed their burn (rocket thrust firing), and they are free of the second stage. Six minutes, 40 seconds into the flight and as yet we’ve heard no numbers on the orbit, but we believe it will be very close to the planned value.

  The miracle was real. Two flawless countdowns followed by two perfect launchings—all in one day from the sands of Cape Canaveral, and Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott were orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour—entering their orbit at 87 by 147 nautical miles, its lowest and highest altitudes. This was comforting for flight controllers who had sought an orbit of 87 by 146, and Gemini 8’s chase of its docking target had begun.

  The astronauts shot each other a thumbs-up, and Neil felt as if he was a stranger in this new world. He wasn’t sitting up or lying down in this unbelievable place where up and down no longer existed. He was floating in physical limbo with only his harness holding him in his seat as loose objects drifted in Gemini 8’s cabin while before him, looking out his cat-eye window, he could tell the sun behind him was low above its horizon.

  Neil could now see the western coastline of North Africa where clouds obscured most of it to Casablanca. From there, he could see landmarks all the way to the rock of Gibraltar and out farther before them the sculpted sands of the great Sahara. The sun reflecting low across the desert told him he was about to see his first night in space.

  Neil and Dave enjoy their first view of orbit. (NASA)

  The twilight was simply beautiful, and for the next five or six minutes Neil watched the slow but continuous reduction in light intensity in the brilliant orange-and-blue layers that appeared to be blankets protecting Earth beneath the totality of the universe’s black sky. And then, 34 minutes into their flight, all light dimmed into the completeness of dark, and night was upon them. They could suddenly see brilliant fire streaming from Gemini 8’s thruster rockets as they fired; but it was not the only fire. Far below, thunderstorms were spitting snarling fiery bolts that created their own jagged, dancing patterns, and Neil turned down the lights in their spacecraft’s cabin to further acclimate themselves to the darkness.

  The small towner was simply amazed, as he had been in childhood, seeing so many stars. They were more rich and defined and the Milky Way was—hell it was the Milky Way—unbelievable. It was so defined and definite wrapping itself around them as Earthglow, even from the dark side, gleamed softly along their spacecraft with light from forest fires and burning plumes of oil and natural gas wells from Lagos, Nigeria, below. In the atmosphere itself, continuous lightning danced along its clouds, staying with them as streaks from meteors burned fierce paths through Earth’s protective layers of dense air.

  Neil stares in wonder at the Milky Way—so distinct and breathtaking. (NASA)

  Above Neil and Dave was their solar system, t
heir masterly detailed Milky Way, and beyond were great galaxies, dense clusters, and black holes. Along their edges were exploding stars being crushed by the universe’s most powerful gravity, and beyond—yes beyond—was the infant universe ten, eleven, twelve billion light years away where only the clearest and blackest skies could be found. When they returned their eyes to their own solar system—most notable to Neil from his astronomy days—were the planets, just hanging there like distant lighthouses in the constant dark.

  Neil Armstrong would never admit it to a living soul, but the gods were truly welcoming him to their beautiful home.

  A view of the Hawaiian Islands from space. (NASA)

  TEN

  GEMINI 8: THE DOCKING

  Once in orbit, the Gemini 8 astronauts were following a demanding set of flight maneuvers to rendezvous with their Agena target. There was little time for sightseeing, but Neil Armstrong didn’t want to miss the Hawaiian Islands as well as his old stomping grounds at Edwards. He and Dave Scott both wanted to steal enough time to see their homes near Houston, and at 1 hour and 12 minutes following their launch, they were making their first pass over the fiftieth state with Neil looking down to see Molokai, Maui, and the Big Island. But when Oahu came into view it was covered with rain clouds all the way to the tracking station on Kauai.

  He smiled. “Hawaii this is Gemini 8,” he called. “We have you in sight. It looks like a nice day.”

  “It’s beautiful weather here, Neil, except for our daily scheduled shower.”

  “Is that you, Virgil?”

  “Roger.”

  “As they say, Virgil, it’s always raining somewhere in Hawaii.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Can’t stop now, but we’ll see you soon.”

  “We’ll be here, Neil.”

  “Let’s go with the update,” Neil requested, and he and Dave grabbed their numbers and sped away. A five-second critical firing with the spacecraft’s forward thrusters was first up.

  The burning of their thrusters would keep them closing in on their Agena target and no sooner had they locked the numbers in the computer Dave Scott looked down and shouted, “We’re going over the Los Angeles area now. Can you believe it?”

  God, they both were green at this spaceflight stuff, Neil thought laughing to himself. They were a couple of giggling tourists in Hawaiian shirts and he simply could not contain his own excitement.

  “Hey look at all those ships!” he shouted before moving his eyes inland. He was reasonably sure he could see Rogers Dry Lake bed; but could he see the cabin? There … that’s where it should be … seven years he had spent in the high desert … memories … so many, but now wasn’t the time for reminiscing.

  He turned back to his duties and in less than seven minutes they were over the Houston area. He and Dave struggled to see their homes—too many clouds; not enough time to look.

  It was 1 hour and 34 minutes into their flight. It was time for their next burn and Neil fired Gemini 8’s thrusters. They burned for five seconds, and the spacecraft’s orbital speed decreased slightly. But there was suddenly another problem! When the firing was completed, it took a few seconds for the residual thrust to clear, which varied the computer readings making it difficult to tell the exact change in orbital speed.

  The computer people on the ground went off to work on the problem while the crew, for the next 47 minutes, operated Gemini 8’s computer in “catch-up mode.” Their duty was to continue the chase. Gemini 8 was now below their Agena. That meant their spacecraft was traveling a shorter distance than their target, moving faster around Earth.

  Neil and Dave were trying to lock-on its radar with the Agena’s transponder. The transponder had one job—answer the inquiring signal from Gemini.

  The terminal phase could not begin until they had a solid radar lock, and at 3 hours, 48 minutes, and 51 seconds into the flight, Mission Control was standing by to talk to the crew over the Tananarive tracking station.

  Tananarive was located in the Malagasy Republic on the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa, and astronaut Jim Lovell raised the astronauts asking, “Do you have solid radar lock on the Agena?”

  “That is affirmative.” Neil delivered the good news. “We have solid radar lock. Just a second and I will give you our current range.”

  “Roger.” Lovell smiled.

  “We are indicating a 158-mile range and an elevation of about 4 degrees.”

  “Roger, sounds good and I’m seeing about three minutes and nine seconds until your burn.”

  Over Tananarive Neil Armstrong was ready to fire his thrusters again. The orbit they had been moving through to catch up with its target was elliptical, and Armstrong nosed down his spacecraft and triggered his rockets. The firing circularized their orbit in a more precise plane with the Agena, and Gemini 8 continued to close on its target. Neil and Dave had radar giving them range and position and they knew they would see the Agena at some point, but just when and where?

  Then at 4 hours and 48 minutes into the mission Neil told them to stand by: “Okay, we’ve got a visual on the Agena at 76 miles,” he reported. “At least we have some object in sight. Or something that looks like it could be the Agena.”

  “Understand a visual Agena, or Sirius, 76 miles,” acknowledged Houston.

  “Yeah,” Neil replied. “It could be a planet.”

  They moved ahead. Not sure they were seeing the Agena, but sure it was out there. They wanted to be in the dark for most of their approach until roughly ten miles out. That’s when Agena would reenter daylight and they could see it like a huge beacon against the black of the universe and Neil called: “Okay, we could have a solid visual on the Agena,” he told them. “Range is 56 miles. I’m taking a second look at it with the sextant.”

  Then, silence. Fifteen minutes passed with no word from the crew. Some flight controllers were getting edgy but spacecraft communicator Jim Lovell was hesitant to contact the astronauts because this was one of the most difficult parts of the flight.

  “Both crewmen are quite busy,” Lovell explained. “Dave is doing the math for the final approach and Neil is controlling the thrusters.”

  No sooner than Lovell had concluded his report, Neil was back. “Okay, going into darkness at—let’s see, 05:02. We lost a visual on the Agena, and I had the ACQ [acquisition] light up right away. Range was forty-five miles.” He paused. “It’s very hard to see, but it looks like a sixth-magnitude star, I’d say.”

  Flight controllers looked at one another as Gemini 8 moved deep into the night side of Earth. The astronauts’ rendezvous and docking mission so far was pretty much peaches and cream.

  Neil and Dave’s hunt for their Agena quarry had gone better than most would have predicted and, with the distance between the two craft closing fast, they set up for their final push.

  “Okay, I’m going to start braking down a little bit very shortly,” Neil told Dave. “Are we inside 15K?” he asked.

  “Inside 15K,” Dave assured him (15K is 15,000 feet or 2.84 nautical miles).

  The Coastal Sentry Quebec tracking ship below told Mission Control Gemini 8’s range from its Agena target was now about 14,000 feet and several flight controllers raised their thumbs indicating that things were going along very well.

  Agena’s light! It was straight ahead. Neil and Dave were fixed on its glare and Neil Armstrong kept his spacecraft closing the distance between the two at the glacial pace of about five feet per second, a speed any runner could best.

  It was the critical point of the mission. Agena was so close. No time to lose concentration. Move in slowly and surely; put on the brakes at the precise time for station-keeping.

  The maneuvers were at their most critical and demanding, but that didn’t stop Houston from asking for more talk from the crew. “The pilots are acting extremely ‘ho-hum,’” Mission Control told the Coastal Sentry. “Could you urge them to say a bit more about their situation?”

  They were back on the day side
, but Neil and Dave weren’t talking, they were concentrating. They were making ever so sure they were crossing all their Ts and dotting all their Is, since in orbit they had been very much alone in their work. They weren’t about to screw things up now by losing focus in banter with the ground. Not when … Suddenly, they were no longer alone!

  It was right there!

  Sitting right in front of Gemini 8 was Agena. It was big. It was bold. It was beautiful. It was a product of Earth. Neil smiled at Dave. “That’s just unbelievable,” he said. “Unbelievable!”

  “I can’t believe it, either,” Scott agreed, hitting Armstrong on the shoulder and saying, “Outstanding job, Coach!”

  “It takes two to tango,” Neil assured Dave.

  The Agena target a football field away. (NASA)

  They had completed their fourth run through the night side and they could now see a crack in the darkness followed by a breath of light that grew rapidly into a riotous shout of color, a vivid, glowing day.

  The sun stabbed across half of the sleek and long Agena rocket stage. It was suspended in the universe’s total blackness. Earthglow reached up with its warm blues and whites to welcome Neil and Dave. The crew of Gemini 8 felt tremendous pride in the thousands who had built and launched the Gemini spacecraft and the Agena—who had sent them on this hunt and chase. They were grateful to, and honored by all those hands at the Cape, in Mission Control, in the Agena and Gemini plants that had made it possible.

  Neil and Dave’s Agena target 150 feet away. (NASA)

  But the biggest prize was still out there—the docking—and suddenly they heard Hawaii calling: “Gemini 8, this is Hawaii CapCom.”

  Dave Scott, knowing the hard work Neil had put into pulling off the rendezvous, smiled and said, “You tell them.”

  Armstrong nodded. “Aloha, Hawaii, we’re station-keeping.”

  A cheer came up from the station and Neil continued, telling Hawaii and Jim Lovell in Mission Control that the Agena looked fine, the antennas were all in the proper position, and TDA (The Docking Adapter) hadn’t a scratch, with no apparent worse for wear. They were in good shape for docking.